Encryption prevents an attacker from intercepting traffic sent between you
and your users. It is cheap and easy to implement, and an absolute
necessity when transmitting sensitive data.

Risks

Prevalence

Occasional

Exploitability

Difficult

Impact

Devastating

Insecure Wi-Fi hotspots,
as illustrated in our exercise,
are just one way enterprising hackers have found to take advantage of
unencrypted communication. They may also try to sniff traffic within
your network, and if they get access, inspect traffic going through
compromised edge devices.

Any point between your server and the user’s browser is a potential
weak-spot. Given the non-deterministic nature of internet routing,
a lot of opportunities present themselves to an enterprising attacker.